‘D-Day’ Near For GLD

If you own GLD or think about investing in GLD it is a smart idea to read these two articles first:

• D-Day near for GLD
• The Seven Sins of GLD

According to the author Jeff Nielson of the article, "D" can stand for "Default"-Day or "Destruction"-Day. He is wrong about the date when D-Day will occur (he suggested 11/11/11), but his warnings are food for thought nevertheless.

Our Daily Poison

The autor Marie Monique Robin of the highly acclaimed full-length documental "The World according to Monsanto" has released a new work, again a full-length documental entitled "Notre Poison quotidien" ("Our Daily Poison"). The English trailer is available here. The full version is available in French (Notre Poison quotidien), in German (Unser täglich Gift - Wenn Essen krank macht) and with Spanish subtitles (Nuestro Veneno Cotidiano). Since "The World according to Monsanto" was such an excellent piece of work and investigation, I am very much looking forward to this new documentary released in January 2011. It will be another must-see documental!

Debt Simplified

These are some numbers from the US, but one can easily replace it with numbers from Greece, Italy, Spain, Zimbabwe, ... It is pretty clear that we are not addressing the problem, we are not even grasping it. (The $38.5 trillion number budget cut figure seems to refer to the budget cut deal that averted a US government shutdown in April 2011.)  (Source)

Some stats about the US government:

• U.S. Tax revenue: $2,170,000,000,000 
• Fed budget: $3,820,000,000,000 
• New debt: $ 1,650,000,000,000 
• National debt: $14,271,000,000,000 
• Recent budget cuts: $ 38,500,000,000 

Now, remove 8 zeroes and pretend it’s a household budget:

• Annual family income: $21,700 
• Money the family spent: $38,200 
• New debt on the credit card: $16,500 
• Outstanding balance on the credit card: $142,710 
• Total budget cuts: $385

Any questions?

1000 Uses for old Pallets

This is fantastic video of only 2 minutes. It gives so many ideas of how to use and reuse old pallets. Just outstanding!

Energy Conservation

I just stumbled across this link on energy conservation. It is a very long list on energy conservation ideas, simple actions and DIY projects for your home. It has a lot of information on a single page. There is something here for everyone.

Going in Circles

When do you think the following text was written?

Rule a nation with justice.
Wage war with surprise moves.
The more laws and restrictions there are,
The poorer people become.
The sharper men's weapons,
The more trouble in the land.
The more ingenious and clever men are,
The more strange things happen.
The more rules and regulations,
The more thieves and robbers.


Why are the people starving?
Because the rulers eat up the money in taxes.
Therefore the people are starving.
Why are the people rebellious?
Because the rulers interfere too much.
Therefore they are rebellious.


It was written some 2400 years ago by Lao Tse in his book Tao Te Ching. The two segments of text were taken from chapter 57 and 75. As we see history constantly repeats itself.

Earthships

Earthships are a form of sustainable housing construction pioneered by Michael Reynolds, primarily using earth-filled used tires, old glass and water bottles as construction material. This 90-min documentary entitled Garbage Warrior outlines his personal story and shows some marvellous examples of earthships in New Mexico. It is amazing to see his vision in the houses he built more than 30 years ago.

Occupy Wall Street

We are celebrating the 1st month anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement. I am impressed. I think it is great that they don't have a list of demands, no list of claims or a single slogan yet. It needs talking, discussing and listening to derive a movement direction in a true participative democratic way. It is great to see them open, inclusive rather than exclusive, restrained rather than impulsive, local yet distributed. In Taoist style their non-action is the best action, the most convincing and moving action.

In "This Rebellion will not Stop" they write: "We have not come to work within the system. We are not pleading with the Congress for electoral reform. We know electoral politics is a farce. We have found another way to be heard and exercise power. We have no faith in the political system or the two major political parties. And we know the corporate press will not amplify our voices which is why we have a press of our own. We know the economy serves the oligarchs. We know that to survive this protest we will have to build non-hierarchical communal systems that care for everyone." So true, Occupy Wall Street must seek sustainable and auto-sufficient paths in order to survive. I certainly feel they understand the problem and the depth thereof. The problems are so profound that there is no single slogan that can express it, no single action that can fix it, no single body that can address it.

Plenty of reasons to get informed about, follow and support the Occupy Wall Street movement around the globe. Here are some starting points:

• Occupy Wall Street Journal, Issue 1
• Occupy Wall Street Journal, Issue 2
• Occupy Wall Street Journal, Issue 3
• Occupy Wall Street Journal, Issues 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ... (online articles and PDF copies)

Follow the Occupation:

• OWS
• nycga.net
• occupywallst.org
• occupiedmedia.org
• takethesquare.net
• occupytogether.org
• wearethe99percent.tumblr.com
• www.facebook.com/theowsj
• www.youtube.com/occupytv
• www.youtube.com/user/OccupyTVNY
• www.youtube.com/user/LibertyPlazaRev
• Follow on Twitter: @occupywallstnyc, @nycsep17, @occupywallst

But the Occupation must be careful. Some of its methods have been criticized, especially the people's microphone. The biggest thread is being high-jacked. It has happened since the start and the high-jacking attempts will only intensify as the visibility of the Occupation increases. Politicians, CIA, CEOs, etc. all are waiting in line to influence and use the Occupation for its own purposes. Read OWS: Are Mindless Americans Falling Prey to the Collectivist Trap? to get an alternative viewpoint. "To avoid the collectivist trap, participants in OWS events must first learn to read between the lines, or they may unwittingly become party to something completely different to what they thought they had signed up for in the first place." Be watchful, be critical!

Gold has Changed

The article "Gold bugs beware - The Gold bubble is finally bursting" in the Financial Times argues that the gold bubble is about to burst. I would agree that gold is in a bubble phase, but I see it as a lesser evil than other forms of investment and wealth protection. What the article does bring to ones attention is that gold today is not what gold was a decade ago. Gold has changed a lot due to the creation of popular ETFs such as GLD. Now gold has become an electronic digit on the computer, it can be bought, sold, repackaged, options taken with the click of the mouse or the stroke of a key. It has turned gold into a speculation. Even those of us who dislike the idea of speculation have to live with this new fact. The burdensome and limiting process of a physical object has become a 0 or 1 sent through the Internet at the speed of electrons. Now its here, now its not. It is bought and sold like any other share thousands of times a day when its value moves a cent up or a cent down. With this in mind we can forget anything we know about gold and forget all the lessons learned from gold in the past. Gold isn't gold anymore. Gold is riskier than ever before and it might bring to light many unexpected surprises. Still what is one going to chose for one's personal pension or long-term nest-egg: dollars, Euros, government bonds, oil, real estate, silver or gold? One option looks worse than the other. The least frightening option might still be precious metals.

Economics of Happiness

Helena Norberg-Hodge produced another documentary. This full-length documentary is entitled "The Economics of Happiness". Another maybe even more appropriate title for this film might have been "How to achieve sustainability through localization". The film talks a lot about globalization, what it has brought us and where it failed. It recommends localization to achieve sustainability and more personal happiness. In the USA happiness peaked in 1956, every years since then the percentage of Americans that considers themselves as happy declined. We are clearly not on the right track. Helena Norberg-Hodge also brings some of her experience from Ladakh and from her previous documentary Ancient Futures into this film. Anyone who wants to be happy should watch the film.

Crisis and Crisis

We are all informed about the financial crisis that we are in. The news outlets are full of this topic. We easily forget that this is not the only crisis we are in. We have to put this financial crisis into perspective. It will make us poorer, but we will not die due to it.

The planet is also in a hunger crisis. Right now 925 million people suffer hunger. See the hunger statistics here, most data is from the United Nations. More than 5 million people die each year of hunger. According to UNICEF, nearly one in four people, 1.3 billion live on less than $1 per day, while the world's 358 billionaires have assets exceeding the combined annual incomes of countries with 45 percent of the world's people.

We should be aware of this and not forget one crisis due to the other. And then there are peak oil, the environmental crisis, social crisis, ... Despite all of this we have plenty of reasons to be happy and appreciative of what we have.

US worse than Greece

That the US is more in debt than Greece is nothing new, but it rarely makes it into CNN. Also, because of its size and power the destiny of the US and Greece will not be the same. Greece will be torn into shreds while the US has several options not available to Greece due to its dominance of the Dollar currency, the military strength, and political/military control over the oil supply.

The article suggest a new tax plan for the US eliminating the personal and corporate income tax and basing everything on a 17.5% sales tax. The Purple Plans are 5 plans out of which one is the The Purple Tax Plan. The name purple is used as a middle ground for red (Republicans) and blue (Democrats).

Gold Mining nationalized in Venezuela

Hugo Chavez nationalized the mining of gold in Venezuela. Private mining becomes illegal. Why? Apparently many poor mine in the rainforest causing income/tax loss to the government while destroying the environment. Read here. At the same time he announced that Venezuela will bring home $11 billion in gold bullion currently held in vaults in various oversea banks such as JP Morgan. Now that is an interesting move. Is the gold market becoming illiquid? Will this cause a run on physical gold? It is easier to control at home in the National Bank of Venezuela than abroad. It could be a safeguard to avoid having it confiscated by other nations or being blackmailed through political sanctions. Either way it seems a smart move. Or it could be a requirement by China, Russia or Brazil to have the gold bullion at home as a security or guarantee for the loans of $30+ billions received from these 3 countries over the last couple of years. Here are some more thoughts on the Why.

Political Philosophy

I started reading the Tao Te Ching, the booklet attributed to Laozi. While reading through this scripture, the foundation of Taoism, I realized the link to today's libertarian political movement. The Tao Te Ching holds clues to how a country should be governed. Vincent Shen writes in the Encyclopedia of Chinese Philosophy on pp. 359 (Section Laotzi):

Laozi’s political philosophy concerns mostly the art of governing, which, for him, should refer to the dao, follow the dao, and unfold the de of all people and all things. An ideal state is, negatively, a state with no political domination and, positively, a place where people and things can spontaneously unfold their own virtue. The unfolding of the creative abilities or sponta- neous virtues of the people is therefore the greatest wealth of a state. In order to attain this, the ruler should adopt a politics of nonaction (wuwei). This does not mean ruling without any action; rather, it means ruling according to the dao—that is, no particular action or no action of particular interest but universal action, acting for all things; no artificial action but spontaneous action. The politics of nonaction is a politics of nonintervention.

Isn't there a clear correlation? As we know all things are connected. All ideas are recycled and built upon. Often without knowing it we base our thoughts on century old ideas.

Gold vs. Oil

Both resources oil and gold are interesting from an investment perspective. Both are natural resources and interesting options in times of change. Oil took quite a nose dive over the last weeks and gold is up by 30% YTD. Why is that? The answer nobody can know for sure but there are certainly many factors ranging from economic growth, economic forecasts, resource discoveries, exploration costs, speculation, global stability, wars to political signals. Here is an interesting up-to-date chart comparing oil to gold. On the chart one can quickly see that the oil to gold ratio has doubled ion just one year (2008 to 2009) and is overall quite volatile.

GMO losing Effect

Monsanto's genetically modified corn no longer protects against pests. The corn bug has become resistant against the GMO plant. This is one of the first proven cases that biotech GMOs lead to superbugs and superweeds.

Instead of rethinking the issue Monsanto and other companies only take it a step further. Monsanto and Syngenta are now researching how to use a medical breakthrough called RNA interference to, among other things, make crops deadly for insects to eat. If this works, a bug munching on such a plant could ingest genetic code that turns off one of its essential genes. I guess they are creating super GMO leading to a super-super bug in the following phase.

Read the Wall Street Journal article here or here.

Gold as Safe Haven?

While the article "'Safe Haven' Assets Start to Look Risky" does not have a lot of facts and hard data it gives some common sense perspectives on safe haven investments in current times. It does a light comparison of gold, Swiss Francs and government treasury notes.

Back to Eden

The documentary film entitled "Back to Eden" about permaculture in Washington was just released and is available at the Back-to-Eden website. Over decades Paul Gautschi has used and evolved an approach focusing on mulching with newspaper and wood chips. He has great success with this. Visit his site or read this summarizing article.

Doomsday Preppers

Preparing for the uncertain future might become popular. There is already a small percentage of people doing it today to one degree or another. My personal guess would be that some 5% of the population have consciously done some thinking and performed some actions in order to prepare for a period without electricity, scarce water sources, food shortages, civil unrest, and so forth.

Today I stumbled across a National Geographic TV show that might make "prepping" into a fashionable, socially accepted and respected activity. This is an exaggeration, but it will remove some ill stigma from preppers. The TV series is an easy-viewing show called "Doomsday Preppers". Some episodes or snippets from Doomsday Preppers can be found here. They give some ideas and examples of what can be achieved such as a wood-powered car or an old swimming pool converted into a sustainable ecosystem with a thousand fish.

Urgent Warning

This 5-min video appropriately summarizes the state we are in and the direction we should be roughly heading for. Have a look at Ron Paul's urgent warning.